Monday, 1 September 2008

I heard it on the (Reykjavik) grapevine

There is no better way to get an idea of what is going on in a city than by reading the street press, and of course the greatest insight comes from the letters to the editor page: Canberra has BMAcovering the Garema Place silver cushion wars and bitch waitresses in "you pissed me off", Sydney has Drum Media with constant talk of sniffer dogs, scalpers and loss of the local live scene, and Reykjavik has The Grapevine where, between letters about pronunciation of Icelandic words and expressions of distaste for Americans, Björk has created a stir by highlighting what she sees as inherent sexism in music journalism.

While a beer in any of Reykjavik’s oh-so-cool bars will set you back an arm and a leg plus your first born, the Reykjavik Grapevine is free. The Grapevine is an English language street press loaded with useful information for the small ex-pat community and entertainment hungry tourist alike.

An Open Letter to the Reykavik Grapevine from Björk Guðmundsdóttir.

I saw in the last issue of iceland’s newspaper in english : “grapevine” , that valgeir sigurðsson was credited for having written all the instrumentals for my album vespertine . could i please offer a correction : ...

...i´d like to say that he didn´t write it or produce . he was a computer programmer for a third of it and a recording engineer for a third . The other two thirds were done by other engineers and programmers.

Björk then offers some suggestions as to why this miss truth has existed for so long covering: ignorance, sexism, and laziness.

...i hope this correction will be a positive input into more discussion about this